When Life Gives You Potatoes
by Gryph
Summary: After Mark Watney is rescued by the Hermes, his ordeal isn't entirely over. He has a long road of recovery from his ordeal on Mars.


"How's he doing, Beck?" Commander Melissa Lewis asked her flight surgeon. Behind an observation window, Mark Watney, recently rescued from his nineteen-month exile on Mars, reclined on an exam table in the _Hermes_ sick bay. A thin sheet covered his emaciated body from the waist down, a portable imaging machine positioned over his chest.

Doctor Chris Beck looked up from the monitor that displayed a rendering of Watney's rib cage. "Well, he was right." He pointed to a section of the image where dark lines bisected three of the bright bones. "Three ribs cracked under the g-forces, probably due to low bone density from hypocalcemia."

"English, Beck."

"Well, I won't know until all the blood tests are done, but he's showing symptoms of some severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Low calcium makes the bones brittle. Scurvy from a lack of vitamin C makes the skin and gums break down—that's why he has all those skin lesions. He's certainly anemic." Beck punched a few buttons on a keyboard and rows of numbers appeared. He drew in air through his teeth. "And he's about fifty pounds underweight."

"Good god," Lewis breathed.

"From the data NASA sent, he's been subsisting on about 600 calories a day for months. That's about a third of what a healthy male needs to maintain his body weight."

She crossed her arms, hugging them to her chest as the guilt she still felt threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn't allow that; she still had a mission to command for the ten months, and a crew that depended on her to hold it together. "Ok, so priority one is fattening him up." Creating a action plan helped.

"Yes. We're going to have to be careful reintroducing food to his system, though." Beck said. He started typing up a food plan into Watney's file. "But he should be able to build up over the next week or so to a healthy amount of food. Let him eat as much as he wants for now; I want him to take in at least 2400 calories a day, with as much protein as he can handle. And mega-doses of all the water-soluble vitamins."

Lewis nodded. "All right. Take good care of our boy, Doc."

* * *

Mealtime on the _Hermes_ had become a social activity for the crew again. Although they had been used to taking meals together on the trip to Mars and for the eighteen sols they been on planet before the abort, after their return to _Hermes_ without Watney, they crew had begun to spend their off-time alone. All of them in the rec area or the commissary only emphasized the absence of their colleague; one empty chair was a lot harder to overlook when all the others were occupied. But once Watney was back, they all gathered around him as often as possible, as if they believed that he'd disappear if they took their eyes off him for too long.

For his part, Watney was just glad to spend as little time alone as possible. He'd had enough of that to last him years, if not the rest of his life.

At first, he was worried that the rest of the crew would be put off by the sight of him. Even after he'd washed the smell of his disgusting EVA suit from his skin, the stench still haunted his nostrils. It took a week for his gums to stop bleeding every time he ate and the sores on his skin to stop oozing. But he could still feel his bones protruding at every joint. He knew his body was painful to look at; every time he caught a glimpse of it in the mirror, he though "my god, look at that poor man," before he remembered that he was looking at himself.

But despite his fears, the crew didn't seem at all bothered by his appearance, cracking jokes to help erase the awful memory of the last year and a half.

"Hey Johanssen," Major Rick Martinez called to the pretty, petite systems operator, with a sideways glance at Watney, "did you hear that to pay back some of the money this rescue mission cost NASA, Watney is going to write a cookbook? A thousand and one ways to cook potatoes."

Beth Johanssen snorted, and elbowed Beck, who sat close enough that their legs touched under the table. Across from her, Watney grinned around a mouthful of chicken piccata. He swallowed the buttery food; it tasted like decadence incarnate. "Yeah, but it's gonna be a pretty small book. Mashed potatoes. Baked potatoes. Potatoes with ketchup. Potatoes with mustard. I think my favorite was potatoes in chili. That would make your grandmother roll over in her grave, Martinez." He shoveled a forkful of pasta into his mouth and mugged at his friend.

"There is only one way I want to consume that many potatoes," Alex Vogel, the mission's chemist, piped up. "I would have set up a distillery and made vodka."

The others all laughed, even Commander Lewis after a quick eye roll. She sat up a little straighter in her chair and poked at the half of a chicken breast still on her plate. "I swear, the portions on these ration packs are bigger than before. I think they've overcompensating for something." She ignored Beck's surreptitiously raised brow. "I can't finish this whole thing. You want the rest of mine, Watney?" She started pushing the plate in his direction before he even answered.

Oblivious, Watney shrugged. "I guess, if you're sure you're full." Food waste on a ship was as problematic to get rid of as all the other waste. It had to be jettisoned.

As he dug into the extra food, Lewis noticed the small nods and half-smiles directed at her from the rest of the crew. They'd each started taking turns giving Watney some of their rations at just about every meal. Even though they'd picked up a resupply probe on their flyby of Earth, food and water were still limited quantities. And Watney knew it. No one wanted him to feel guilty about needing more rations than the rest of them, so they stretched what would normally be expected to be consumed at every meal. Lewis considered it her penance for Watney's condition. Going to bed a little bit hungry on some days could never compare to the level of starvation that he'd had to tolerate to survive with a limited food supply. It was just another reminder of why they were still here in space when they could have been home already, reunited with their families and loved ones. The extra time on mission was a small price to pay so that Watney could return with them.

* * *

It took about three months for Watney to get back to a healthy weight. As the weight went on, he spent more time in the gym, to regain the muscle mass that had wasted away. Only when his skin no longer felt like he was wearing a shirt two sizes too big did he start being careful about his food intake. And it was only a few months later that another crew member needed the extra rations anyway. When Beck announced that Johanssen was pregnant when they were still five months away from Earth, Lewis didn't even give him a stern look about fraternizing before she gave them both congratulatory hugs.


End file.
